Brands are their companies’ principal intangible assets, responsible
for the majority of most major advertisers’ market capitalization.
Even so, brands are rarely managed based on a measured understanding of how they contribute to company growth and profit. Well-conceived and managed marketing is a major driver of brand value, yet these concepts are infrequently connected in the marketing planning process. Will an investment in advertising drive brand value? And what cash flow can be expected to result over a given time horizon? Sequent Partners finds that these questions can be answered, although they rarely are. The answer can lead to a better-informed and more profitable advertising and media strategy.
The media world is in the midst of the greatest transition
since the genesis of commercial television.
Consumers adopt some new media immediately and others not at all, spending more than two hours every day with media that did not exist 20 years ago. Consequently, billions of dollars have been made and lost in an IPO instant, resulting in a media industry that would be unrecognizable to David Sarnoff. Yet the everyday transactions between advertisers/agencies and media companies are still based on a decades-old mass-market measure of value.
Sequent Partners thinks the solution to unlocking lost media value is to look to consumers. Consumers have led, but business has failed to follow. Media must be valued on their ability to reach the right consumers when and where they are receptive, with messaging that integrates effectively within each medium, and consumer life, context. Media, message and the rest of the marketing mix must be conceived holistically.
We all know, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,
yet most people go about their day ignoring this truism.
Metrics are how we connect the dots between corporate growth and profitability, brand value, advertising, media, and the rest of the marketing mix. Metrics are how we learn and succeed. Sequent Partners believes that when the effort is made to link consumer value—to brand value—to shareholder value through a proven series of metrics, success is possible.